42
PLAYER CARE
English football’s only psychotherapist helping Oxford United’s players conquer lockdown Gary Bloom, sports psychotherapist at Oxford United addresses several challenges of supporting players’ mental health during lockdown, the effects of playing behind closed doors and the importance of exploring dual careers alongside sport. Bloom is a clinical psychotherapist working from Cognicity’s Harley Street clinic in London and specialising in treating elite sportsmen and women with clients from across the sporting world, including football, rugby, cricket, horseracing, and snooker.
He is the only psychotherapist in English football and a key part of the player care service that has aided Oxford United’s transformation from relegation strugglers last season to play-off finalists in the 2019/20 season. Involved at every level of Oxford United, Bloom works with the first-team and academy from U23 level to U9s, working with players when it comes to performance anxiety, including
ISSUE TWELVE ★ SEPTEMBER 2020
challenges that include injury, poor onfield form and personal matters away from the pitch. Previously, Bloom was a sports broadcaster and he brings together his two professions though his talkSPORT radio show ‘On The Sporting Couch’. Speaking with PSN, Gary emphasises that “we all have mental health as well as physical health” and that psychotherapy is a “talking cure for mental health issues” treating things such as anxiety, depression and addictive behaviours and relationship issues. His role does not exist anywhere else in English football. “One of the greatest shocks I [Gary] came across is that I thought there must be 15, 20, 30, 40 people like me working inside of football clubs, but there isn’t. You need people like me on the training ground,
in the dressing rooms, week to week. “If I was a new manager going into a club, I would be looking for a psychotherapist to work alongside me. The research shows that you get a 7 to 15 per cent increase in productivity and success normally when you do – which could have saved two or three clubs if you look at the bottom of the championship.” The importance of a psychotherapist in sport is even more evident in today’s current climate. Infectious disease outbreaks, like the current coronavirus pandemic can be scary, affecting everyone’s mental health and one of the feelings millions of us are experiencing during the current pandemic is loneliness. While players resided to their homes and were forced to take a break mid-way through the
